Anyone who’s ever been a news editor at high
school newspaper, a grain elevator journal or a national TV network knows the
third certainty. After death and taxes, it’s feast or famine. There is either
so much going on it’s virtually impossible to cover it with the resources at
hand... or not.

Or not is when six people retiring from the local Safeway get the front page.
(Those weekly inserts Safeway buys have nothing to do with it, Commissioner
Copps.) Or not is when some woman in
Buffalo tells the President of the United States he’s hot and it sparks a
conflagration of analysis. An evolutionary diminution of the collective
intellect also could be at work there. That, and the fact that the U.S. news
media has approximately one freelance reporter covering Iraq and Afghanistan
with a Flip Video camera, a first-generation iPhone and a Segway to get across
Iran. Now if Iraq or Afghanistan would buy an insert... but I digress.

Or not recently hit a handful of Midwestern TV stations in the form of a guy
purporting to be a yo-yo champion. That is correct. Five TV stations booked a
spot for a guy who said he was a yo-yo champion. They probably needed something
for the space formerly occupied by run-away Toyota stories. Toyota buys the TV
equivalent of inserts, but that has nothing to do with anything, Commissioner
Copps.

Kenny Strasser, the alleged yo-yo champion turns out to be a either a
performance artist in the vein of Andy Kaufman or a guy dressed like Red Green
who needs help. Identifying himself as “K-Strass” in a painful white-dude
rap-scat on KODE-TV in Joplin, Mo., he proceeds to turn and spin several yo-yos
over his head, entangling the strings. He then says he’s considering giving up
the yo-yo thing because he doesn’t have the “muscle memory” for it.

The stations that booked this guy are taking quite a heckling on the Interwebs.
After all, there’s supposed to be someone checking the credentials of these
yo-yo kings, right? Correct, and that person would be collecting unemployment,
thank you very much. And how hard is it to produce fake credentials? There’s
always someone walking around in a military uniform bedecked with medals they
did not earn. There are a few hundred thousand folks with falsified resumes and
fake IDs, and a couple of million with some form of self-delusion. Fake yo-yo
champion credentials? Not a problem.

Does that excuse the TV news desks that booked the K-Strass? Absolutely not. It
also does not excuse deception, the new black in our culture. Actually,
deception became the new black in the mid-’80s when lying was redouble-speaked
as “spin.” Instead of a passing fad, lying became more of an enduring
quasi-classic, like corfam shoes. You get used to the discomfort.

The K-Strass incident will serve TV stations like KODE in more ways than one.
Nexstar, which runs the station, might bother to hire fact checkers.
Fact-checking easily can be centralized. “Vetted by the Nexstar Fact-Checking
Desk.” Now there’s a marketing hook. “Myrtle, what’s ‘vetted’ mean?”

Also, a heck of a lot more people now know about KODE-TV, the ABC Action News
12 affiliate in designated market area No. 147. At least 608,106 of them or
so--the number of hits the on the KODE K-Strass YouTube clip. That’s roughly a
third more folks than in KODE’s market. If KODE could monetize that, they would
A) make a truckload of money and B) do something Google hasn’t been able to do.

The reporter in the clip also deserves some sort of props for gamely getting
through the thing. I personally hope he’s fought over by the “Today Show” and
“Good Morning America.” More likely, however, K-Strass will get a reality show
and have a full mental break-down on national TV.

Until then.... “Up Next: Live from Los Angeles--Cute Kitten Plays with Ball of Yarn.”